


that loosener of limbs

by WhimperSoldier



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Multi, Omega Damen, backstory rn, fucking up gender dynamics bitch, working on it, you heard right
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2018-11-15 03:06:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11221983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhimperSoldier/pseuds/WhimperSoldier
Summary: A few men teased his brother, jeering about how strong Damen would grow to be, an alpha prince who would steal all their omegas with his bright eyes and smile. The camaraderie made his already dark skin darker with a blush. He wanted to be like these men, their voices deep and their laughter contagious.It was assumed he would be an alpha, he was the first born son of the Exalted king and his wife, he was tall and well muscled, his sword was sharp and his body took to the war arts as if he were born for it.It was three months after they had returned to Ios that Damen awoke to stained sheets and a wetness between his thighs.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Have yet to see much omega Damen in this small fandom so I wrote it myself. Don't judge me.
> 
> Title taken from Sappho.

It was on Damen’s first campaign to the East that his brother allowed him to sit in on after training drinks. He was was young, only having seen twelve summers, but he was strong, broad, with handsome features that all of the palace slaves cooed over. The men had toasted to the young crown prince and his burgeoing sword skills. He was allowed a few sips of the bitter beer, the flavor sticking to the back of his throat and sending the men into laughter when he coughed.

They would pat his head, running their calloused fingers through his hair in a warm greeting to a fellow warrior. It sent his stomach into squirming knots every time their warm Alpha scents tickled his nose.

A few men teased his brother, jeering about how strong Damen would grow to be, an alpha prince who would steal all their omegas with his bright eyes and smile. The camaraderie made his already dark skin darker with a blush. He wanted to be like these men, their voices deep and their laughter contagious.

It was assumed he would be an alpha, he was the first born son of the Exalted king and his wife, he was tall and well muscled, his sword was sharp and his body took to the war arts as if he were born for it.

His father said it would be soon, soon he would present and Damen would be allowed into the Council chambers, allowed to see statecraft up close and not from his brother’s partial recap hours after. The laws were unentertaining but he knew a good king could recite them from heart. Damen was working on that part.

Damen’s father also said he would be gifted with his first slave after he presented. This made his already ruddy cheeks pink. This campaign was comprised of toughened warriors who talked as if their young prince’s tent was not ten feet from the fire.

They told raunchy stories about foreign omegas with their soft eyes and softer moans. Damen had known his slaves would be omegas, and had listened with bated breath as the men three times his senior talked of pleasuring them, bring them to the edge again and again, of the mess and and the rewards. His stomach dropped and rose sending his heart beating fast and his breath to catch every time it made to leave his lungs. He was still young, but he knew what was expected of him on his eighteenth birthday. 

It was three months after they had returned to Ios that Damen awoke to stained sheets and a wetness between his thighs.

A sickness twisted in his gut and he started to cry. Who could he call? His father would be ashamed, his brother annoyed. He crawled off the mattress to the water dish off the side of his bed to scrub the dried slick from his skin and the tears from his face. He could feel his dreams crumbling before his eyes. He had wanted to lead armies, be king, but no omega had ruled Akelios since the Queen Ios herself. Damen pressed his fist to his mouth to stop the sob that threatened to rip its way out of his chest.

He wrapped himself in clean linen and cracked his door enough that he could see the strong line of his guard's back.

“Yes, my prince?” He asked, voice soft, as if the tear tracks were still marking his face. Damen could feel his throat thickening and the words almost died on his tongue.

“Can you wake Hypermenstra?” Damen asked, quietly. The guard looked at him strange but nodded, waving down a passing sentry and relaying the message. Between his crying and the stains on the sheets, a little laugh lodged in his throat, thinking about what the guard must have thought when it came to the prince asking for his father’s consort in the middle of the night like a child for his mother.

Damen waited in his sitting room, clean bed sheets wrapped about his shoulders like when he was younger. His door opened and the king’s mistress walked in, hair folded into a soft braid and eyes questioning why he had woken her. He hadn't asked for her since he was a boy and longing for the mother his birth had taken.

All it took was for him to stand, the smell wafting between them. Hypermenstra, the only mother Damen had ever known, sighed, her face falling in sadness as Damen crumpled over.

She took him in her arms, running her fingers through his hair in soothing circles.

“My child, all is well,” she murmured. “Sweet child all will be well, sleep now, I will guard your dreams, sweet one…”

He awoke in the morning tucking into bed, the linen warm and clean. Muffled words came from behind the curtains separating his bedroom from sitting area. He tried to listen but the delicate words of Hypermenstra were lost under the cutting tone of the king.

He stood and quietly made his way to the divider, lifting it quietly and catching his father raise his hand, as if so smack his lover. Damen must have made a noise because his father spun around, his face pale and his jaw tight.

He took one look before flaring his nostrils. His face twisted up in disgust and, horrifyingly, Damen felt tears gather in his eyes. He willed them away, blighting his tongue but it was too late, his father had seen.

“I will come back later then,” His father huffed, straightening his cape and marching to the door. It echoed behind him when it closed.

It took weeks for the council to disavow him and two days later, Kastor was the crown prince of Akelios. Already, the men who had once patted him heartily on the back, bowed and preened around him, as if he had not raised his sword beside them only months earlier. As if overnight, they saw him only as an omega, warm and soft, and ignorant to the sword on his belt he refused to remove no matter how many times his father asked.

His days changed drastically. What had once been a joyful week full of sword practice and racing the other boys through the city streets became dreary hours spent locked in the library studying languages, histories, and poems. He was placed in the care of a talented omega dancer to learn how to walk, how to move to best show the lean lines of his body. She showed him how to tilt his head just so and how best to hold his hands when introduced to an alpha of higher status. Shameful tears gathered in the corners of his eyes every time his eyes met the floor.

While never the best student, Damen became a master of outrunning the stub-legged beta who taught long, boring lessons on omega grace.

It was Hypermenstra who found the Patras weapons master. He was a short man with arms and legs the size of tree trunks and a surly temper to match. She talked to her king about dance, how she would instruct Damen in the art of high born omegas. His father wrote it off, never interested in much when it came to Damen’s second nature. 

She would read out prose and Damen would recite them back while dodging the blade of his instructor. He got quite good with the war ballads but the love poems tended to be too soft to be read in the breathless huffs Damen made between blows. 

“Long arms, tangled in sweet sheets, love forbidden, love forgot,” she recited, inflection coy and sweet. “Repeat it back to me.”

“Long arm, tangled-uh in swe-shit!” Damen ducked a particularly clever parry and raised his arm to force pressure on the old man’s wrist and get him to release his solid grip on his blade.

He smiled, laughed, and then cried out when the flat part of a blade smacked the flesh of his thigh. He spun and whimpered at the mix of annoyance and humor in her smile. 

“Love forbidden, love... forgot?” Damen ended, breathless and rubbing the raised flesh of his leg where the sword had hit.

“Next time don't phrase it as a question,” she smiled, expertly spinning the blade and plunging it into the soft sand of the training field.

His brother, who had been so distant months prior, became more interested in his teaching. He recommended more schooling, hiring tutor after tutor for subjects Damen had no interest in. The activities cut into his sword practice and he desperately wished his brother would leave him alone. The only positive was that he became fluent in many languages, two more than his crown prince brother who, Hypermentra informed him, spent more time with his slaves than in council meetings. Damen could see the stress of her son’s actions wearing on her and made her a small crown of flowers from his mother’s garden for her hair. She ran a gentle hand down his face and Damen unabashedly nuzzled into her palm.

It got easier as the years went by, the court gossiped about his stature, not the typical omega small but lovely and warm nonetheless. He became a skilled dancer and if anyone saw the similarity between his footwork and sword techniques, they remained quiet. His hair curled as he aged, dropping in perfect ringlets around his face and a single dimple imprinted into his left cheek when he smiled excetionally big. Damen’s skin was rich and clear, his voice a controlled and sweet baritone that he could lighten to a perfect alto even if he never could remember the words to the ballads.

The peace between Kastor and Damen splintered as Damen aged. Fourteen summers and Damen was infamous as the most beautiful thing within the palace walls. His brother grew angered as his mother sequestered herself away with Damen and her ladies. Damen could see the resentment festering under his skin, had seen the way it had consumed an alpha who had come to ask for a highborn omega’s hand in marriage and was denied. The shame had made his smile curl into a snarl and his fingers twist into dull claws. Damen had become better at reading the emotions of those around him, a necessity Hypermenstra said, for an omega of high stature to know what their suitors would hide from them. He could see that sickness clawing at his brother every time Hypermenstra ran her jeweled hands through Damen’s hair or ignored his attempts to talk in the hall or at dinner.

“He is becoming sequestered away from me,” she said one day they were walking gardens. “He has become cold and so much unlike the sweet child I raised. The power is too much, I fear, and this mounting aggression with Vere has not helped matters.”

“Kastor is strong, he will do as all the great kings have done before, stand strong and bring our people glory,” Damen said.

She smiled, warm and kind, but even he could see the slight line of disbelief around her lips.

Damen took to reading to cure the boredom brought about by the watchful eye of his father only weeks after his fifteenth summer. Theomedes had sent guards along with his lover and son on their trip to the countryside for two weeks. He could do nothing but read without inciting the wrath of the alpha men. The only exception being a young beta. He was happy to watch Damen practice his footwork, even if he refused allow so much as a wooden practice sword near the prince. 

Nearer to the border, the small town a mile away from the small royal residence was full of people speaking languages Damen had only heard in a classroom. He practiced his Patras with a merchant selling carpets and his Veretian with a small women who sold jewels in a rundown stall.

The Patras merchant was more interesting, with stories about his travels. He would tell them to Damen if he shared the small snack bought for Damen by Hypermenstra each time he was in the village. Once, while she was haggling for fabrics, Damen asked about omegas countries over.

The merchant gave him a strange look but nodded when Damen split his warm strawberry tart in half between the two of them.

“On my travels across the border, I came across a tribe of female omegas. They let me pass but I knew what they were,” Damen could feel his eyes widen and he eagerly took a bite of his treat and nodded for the man to continue. He laughed, a big belly chuckle. “They are known for being ruthless warriors who steal men away for children they raise to be female leaders. I've even heard tales that they are ghosts of wronged wives, sent back from the grave to kill all those not loyal to their marriage beds.”

“Do you think they were?” Damen asked, reverently. The merchant made to discourage the idea but the gleam in the boy’s eye was so bright, he just nodded. Damen laughed, bright and lovely, into the open square. People glanced around, catching the sight of Damen with his head thrown back with childish delight and the long line of his throat bared. He looked back over the merchant with an exuberant smile. “Maybe I could be too.”

“Could be what, boy?” 

“A warrior,” Damen said, licking the jam from his fingers and jumping down from the merchant's cart to run to where Hypermenstra was waiting with a delicately outstretched hand. He threw an exuberant wave over his shoulder to the flummoxed merchant.

They took many trips in the next year. The people wanted to see their royals and with the mounting raids from over the Veretian and Patras border, a visit from a royal consort and prince was a reason to celebrate. Damen learned about trade routes and kyros grievances. He liked Makadon the best, he was a loud and brash alpha who saw him first as a prince and second an omega. He also stumbled across Damen practicing his form in a side garden after a night of drinking. Damen was ready to drop to his knees and beg for the kyros to not tell his father, but the older man just laughed, sitting down on the closest bench and making corrections to his stance. 

They stayed for two weeks, full of celebrations and practices that made Damen’s feet blister and his fingers to crack from hefting the weight of a real sword and blocking crushing blows from Makadon.

He returned three days before his sixteenth nameday. He hadn’t seen his brother in little under three months and his father in two. Damen watched his father embrace Hypermenstra with a warm kiss to each cheek. He could feel his stomach squirming like when he had tried squid in a seaside town on their trip home. Theomedes moved down the line, clapping hands with men until he reached Damen, his head bowed respectfully to an Alpha of higher standing. The feeling doubled when his father placed a solid hand on his shoulder.

“Raise your eyes son,” Damen was shaking, looking up to the aged face of a father he hadn't seen in months. His hair, as thick and dark as Damen’s, had greyed significantly since they had left, the small smear at each temple grew now to encompass his whole face. “It is good to see you.”

“And you, father,” Damen replied, dull. He didn't know what made his heart pound harder, that his iron-hard father flinched, or that Damen liked it.

Kastor made his way to his brother a few hours into their welcome back feast. His father and Hypermenstra had retired hours ago, lovers wanting to reconnect after months, and Damen couldn't fault them.

“So brother,” Kastor said, waving his cup to be refilled by a pretty omega slave. Her hands looked delicate in the golden cuffs. “I know the road has been hard on you, I was wondering if you would need a guard to escort you back to your rooms. I know you omegas don't enjoy the more vulgar activities done by alphas this late.”

“That won't be necessary,” Damen hissed, his fingers tightening around his goblet. His brother just chuffed, flinging his arm out to get more wine but he was clumsy and overshot how far the slave had been standing. He smacked her stomach and the wine sloshed over the cup and into his lap. Damen watched with mounting horror as the slave went to her knees, tilting her neck in submission and crying quietly.

In her rush to bow, the thick strap of her chiron slipped down her shoulder and exposed the ugly bruise that stained the top of her breast. Kastor stood and raised his hand, as if to hit the slave. Damen, before he realized what he was doing, stood, his chair skidding across the marble with an echoing grating sound. The room turned to look.

“Brother it seems you are right, the road has tired me, perhaps your slave might accompany me to my rooms. We omegas do so love to gossip and I'm months behind on all the palace’s.” Damen had never lied so much or so well before, but once it came out, it was easy to add to it, crafting his face into the perfect picture of innocence. Many men laughed, nodding their head as if all omegas were superficial and lowly. Kastor just huffed, brushing at the stain and nodding like the king he thought he should be.

The slave stood, wobbling slightly as Damen walked with her down the halls. She shrunk lower and lower into herself, her light hair becoming golden in the soft lamplight. Damen opened his door and immediately set to work finding the pallet he knew was in the back of one of the closets. It was only when he came out with a fresh pillow and saw her slowly unclasping her chiton did Damen squeal a little too unmanly to be mistaken as anything other than surprise. The slave laughed, something small that had made it past her training. She clamped her hand over her mouth but it was already too late, Damen was laughing loud and full-bellied. 

“What is your name?” Damen asked once, after their giggles subsided and they were both laying boneless on his bed. 

“Hypia, my prince,” she said, laughing a little at the wide smile on his face. Damen nodded, and buried his face into his sheets. He had heard the men talk about the sweetness of a happy omega and between them both, the smell saturated the air and the bed. It was thick enough that he could taste it on his tongue.

He fell into a peaceful sleep surrounded by the scent of sweet omega and warmth.

It was that single night that opened doors to him. Damen found the slave gardens after a week of snooping behind bed slaves leaving in the morning. It took three days after that to find a way in and almost two additional days for him to build up his courage to pull himself up onto the small window ledge along the far side of the palace.

Damen landed in a pile of silks, warm and fresh. He sat up and caught the eye of a woman sitting on a low table. She raised a single eyebrow and Damen just smiled, waving a little.

“We don't need alphas sneaking into the gardens for a peek. If you leave now I will refrain from telling the slave master,” she said, clear and precise as cut glass. Her dark hair was pulled into a strict bun at the nape of her neck but her skin was a creamy white. Damen shuffled up and his scent came with it. “I see, an omega who wants...what?”

“It's just-” Damen rubbed the back of his head, looking out the open window to the gardens and away from the woman he was going to lie too. Boys and girls were at work. He watched a girl get her hand smacked for curling her letter wrong and another boy burst into tears at switching the words in a Patran ballad. He sighed and said the real reason he had spent his last two weeks scaring the bed slaves that exited and entered the gardens. “I think my first heat is coming. I worry I won't be allowed to...bare it alone.”

“You’ve come to see how our omegas are held off until their first night,” the shrewd woman smirked, the corners of her lips curving upwards and making her face look less like a strict tutor. Damen just sat down, curling his feet up to his chest and wishing the position didn't look so defensive. The woman seemed to look right through him, but Damen knew that couldn't be the case. He had taken all adornments from his clothes, his hair was matted from his ride and so unlike the ringlet curls he wore at the banquets. “Stop with your pouting, little boy, we all must stick together.”

She stood, shaking out her dress and moving to the door and exiting. Damen was too busy noticing the way the sunlight caught on the bright gold of her collar that it wasn't until the silk slipped down the doorway did he notice the sharp tang of alpha from the pillow where she had been sat.

He made to leave, to jump the way he came, when she reentered with a small powder compact between her hands. She raised an eyebrow at his legs kicking fruitlessly at the marble walls to give him the traction to make it back up to the small window.

“Running, my prince?” She asked and Damen felt his grips fail. He landed on his back, cushioned by the blankets, staring up at the woman. “I swear I will not take from you anything your people have already taken from me.”

That was the first time Damen came into contact with a pet from Vere.

Her name was Lisiana and she was once the pet of a rich man who regularly attended court in Arles. She told of the grand spires and the breathtaking architecture that rivaled even the tallest reached of his palace. Even as a young man, tales of far off places, and with her tale of forbidden love between pet and master, it made his heart pound. 

For all of his pleading, she refused to divulge more of her past. Damen resolved to return every few days until she felt comfortable enough to share with him the harshness of the life she ran from.

It took months but Damen was not deterred. Every few weeks she would grace him with more powder and a shred of her story, a slice of her outfits, a piece of her travel.

“How did you get away from the Wife’s assassins?” Damen asked, leaning off his small stool to listen better. She had told him of the jealous wife on the eve of his seventeenth birthday.

“I crossed the border and became a slave to a local Kyros. He thought I was a washed up pet anyways, he never needed to know how highly I needed his protection.” She grew quiet, wringing the silks wrapped around her hip. Once she glanced up though, she saw the excited gleam in Damen’s eye and smiled, soft and sweet. Damen felt a little burst of warmth in his stomach and vowed to try and keep that expression on her face for as long as possible. She continued. “Once he saw how highly taught I was in dance, he sent me to the palace to garner favor with the king. Your father sent me here to teach those more beautiful and younger than I.”

“Nonsense!” Damen laughed, muffling it in a pillow. He could feel the diffused feeling of pre-heat build in his belly and Lisiana inhaled deeply. The powder was lovely but couldn't hide the slight tang of omega. Damen watched her tilt her head back and stared mesmerized by the waterfall of smooth hair that slithered down the arch of her back. 

“I think you should go, Damen,” she said, standing and moving across the room to the small desk. She refused to meet his eyes. 

He went.

He spent a listless few days wandering the castle. His feelings had soured in his stomach and every time his feet took him to the comfort of the slave gardens, he found his fingers curling into the thick skin of his palms. He stood in his room now, gaze distant and vague. The general flood of soldiers came in through the side gates and through the gardens under Damen’s balcony. They were painfully young, flushed faced and wide eyed, fresh from their respective time at the Kingsmeet. 

Damen was not allowed in the council meeting, few omegas were, but Kastor had been bragging to anyone who would listen about the Patras blood that would be spilled in the name of the border villages. Damen wondered if the twisted gut he got just thinking of the slaughter was from his conscience or the other side of himself he refused to acknowledge.

He ached for a sword, the pull of muscle and the sweet taste of pride from his father. It was a physical pain, sharp and all encompassing. It sang in his blood and rose to a staccato pitch in his heart. 

He moved purposefully down the hall, making the turn easily and pulling himself through the window with grace. Damen had seen where she kept the powder and knew she would be able to get more.

It was simple, really. He penned a note, about a wild and torrid affair that left him on the trail of his forgone lover. He said he would be back in four months time. His horse was prepared and he only needed his most basic of clothes, muslin and plain unadorned cotton.

“You are leaving?” Damen almost dropped the small container of powder. Lisiana was standing at the door, her hair done up in an intricate twist.

“I have to, my father will never look at me if I don't do something to make myself worthy,” Damen whispered, clutching the small compact of powder in his hands.

“Oh Damen,” She sighed, moving forward to run warm fingers down the side of his face. He leaned into her touch, rubbing the slight stubble on the small lines of her palms. “You are a bright star, why do you need to find yourself lacking?

Damen could tell this was not a question he was meant to answer and instead wrapped her in a bear hug. She gripped him hard in response, frowning as she tucked the small compact in his warm palm, folding his fingers over it as if to show her blessing.

Damen smiled, bright and warm, before pressing a chaste kiss to her cheek and exiting the way he came.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His father had him fitted for a cuff, a slave cuff, a sign to everyone who saw him that he was not a prince first, but an omega, as beautiful and useless as a slave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final finished something in this AU that I liked. I kept adding to it and cutting scenes so here just have this. Also, your comments give me life so please, if you have time, tell me what you think and any ideas you might have!

“I know I can beat him father,” Kastor boasted. He’d consumed half a tankard of mead that night but so had half the camp. Damen stood off to the side, his seat a step lower from that of the royal family. Unmated omegas always seemed to be just out of the eyeline, something pretty for the eyes to gloss over on their way to the people with the power.

Just they way her’s did.

Damen sighed, soft and mournful and just melancholic enough to catch the attention of a general. He seemed to share Damen’s lackluster confidence in his brother. For all of his bluster, he had beaten Kastor in every fight since he was seventeen summers old and fresh off the bloody battles in the east. If anyone could take down the golden prince, it might be Damen. The general thought so too.

“Your grace, is there really no other you could send in your place?” He asked, his face wrinkled but still tight, as if his skin had stretched too far before being dropped. “Another who is…” Here he paused but resolutely looked everywhere but the place where Damen was sitting. “Not as central to the running of the country as you?”

“Do you think me a coward?” Kastor questioned, the tent falling silent as the crowned prince leaned forward to stare into the poor man’s eyes. “Maybe you mean my brother?” He raised his glass in a mockery of a toast. “He is a soft omega fit for few things despite what his bought soldiers might tell you.”

Damen refused to rise to the bait. If all Kastor did was insult his ridiculous war hero status Damen would be satisfied, he would be content that the killing blow was not dealt and his men would still receive their wages even if they also received jeers at the mention of who their commander was.

Most assumed Damen gained his loyal guard through money, or perhaps his father’s generosity. Others thought he had enslaved all of them to his omega wiles. The truly despicable thought Damen gave them favors of the sexual nature after battles in which they won. Damen could feel his blood boil just thinking of it.

“Damen is not to step foot onto the battlefield after his...addition in the last battle,” His father said, stifling the slight worried tone that had taken over the tent. Damen just looked down onto his untouched plate and thought of the warmth of a friendly fire and the laughter of friends. He longed to be anywhere but here. Damen wondered idly if the other crown prince, the one as golden as the ones in the storybook, was feeling as adrift as he.

He slept fitfully, tossing and turning on his furs. The fire, only feet from his tent, threw frightful shadows along the leather and made Damen breath deeply to dispel the pressure building behind his chest. It felt like a weight was slowly pressing into his lungs, as if all the air was suddenly gone and he couldn’t catch his breath.

That night he dreamt of snakes hiding in billowing grass.

That day he watched snakes of an altogether different kind crush his brother’s men under foot like they were nothing more than ants beneath their boots. It had been poorly planned and even more poorly executed. His brother, for all his faults, should have talked to his father if not Damen. He had never led anything larger than a small platoon of men and now the blood of thousands of their soldiers was spilling like water onto the once pristine grasses of Marlas.

Damen hesitated for a single second. To charge would mean disobeying his king. To obey meant watching his brother fall underfoot to the more skilled Prince of Vere.

He mounted his steed in a single smooth stroke and whistled for his men. His sword burned where it was pressed along his thigh and the sun was making his thick curls droop into his eyes with sweat. Damen could feel his heart climb up into his throat and beat in crazed tandem with the hoofbeats of his warhorse.

The infusion of fresh men was like a warm knife through butter. The soldiers of Vere were worn and lagging, having almost completely decimated Akileos’ troops. Damen’s highly skilled and trained men was too much for their lacking defences.

The crown princes were almost pitifully easy to find. Kastor had demanded new armor, a shiny and bulky collection of pieces that rattled every time Auguste brought down his sword. Kastor was moving slower and slower, taking step after step backwards to put distance between them but only succeeded in twisting his ankle in the churned up mud. He fell and the curved lions decorating his mail was covered in bloody earth.

Damen’s blade smacked against a beautifully executed downward swing, and sent his mare skittering away. Damen jumped down, his thigh wound stung, a vivid reminder of what happened when even the best swordsman forgot his modesty.

The prince, while good, was no match for Damen, fresh into battle and armored only in a light boiled leather and not thick chainmail and plate. The extra defense of his coat of arms became a hindrance as the fight wore on, weighing him down and doing little to lessen the impact of Damen’s heavy swings.

The rain splattered down around them now in great sheets and Damen could feel his feet shift in the loosened mud. The opposing prince in his metal boots was having much the same problem. Damen, in those seconds between parries and blows, felt inexplicably like laughing. Here he stood, fighting a man he wished to befriend to gain a country Damen could have won without bloodshed.

It’s not too late a traitorous voice whispered in the back of his mind which sounded too much like his brother’s wife Jokaste for his taste. Damen blocks a blow, brings the other prince in close, presses their bodies together until they share the same air. This close, Damen can see the bright blue of his eyes and the pale blond of his hair that has come loose from the tight plait at the base of his skull.

“Parley,” He hisses, his voice coming out panicked and high, too breathless for his tastes. He sounds like the lusty omegas from the stories and the prince’s eye widen once he realizes just who he is talking to. Damen talks faster. “Call a parley!”

He pushes them apart and the prince stumbles, catching himself on the shoulder of another of his men. Damen watches him, measures the tick in his jaw and the way his eyes slant down to Damen’s brother, sprawled out akembo on the ground, his hand cradled close to his chest. This golden prince, hair flying wild, the tips dipped in blood, nods slowly, raising his hand and sending his men scuttling back.

Kastor tries to stand, his lips twisting their language into hateful slurs, cursing so violently that spittle flies from his mouth and drips unattractively down his blood stained chin. Damen hold him back, digging his fingers into the wound in Kastor’s shoulder. His brother cries out in pain and is pulled back by his remaining men and up the hill to their camp and it’s healers.

Damen moves slowly, watching the remaining stream of soldiers make the trek from the basin they had unknowingly been fighting in. Dying men were killed as they went, their cries for help being answered, sometimes by Damen, with a quick knife slash to their throats.

One man was crying for his mother, another for his wife. Damen could only hold their hands and promise them lies as their lungs filled with blood and they slowly suffocated. An aged soldier from Vere thanked him as he slowly slid the knife home. It took hours to reach the edge of the battlefield, so long that the sun had crawled under the treeline and made the sky as red as the grass. A sigh. Damen’s feet sunk into the mud, his sandals offering little resistance to the sand, blood, and viscera that had seemed to cling to every inch of his skin.

As he rounded the hill, his father stood as regal as always atop his horse. Damen could feel as his stomach sank.

He had hoped for peace and paid for it with blood.

It took days for the Venetian nobles to agree with their new king to a parley. It took even longer to convince the Akelions that the parley was not some elaborate trap meant to ensnare their king and his son.

Damen, of course, was not invited.

Instead, his father had him fitted for a cuff, a slave cuff, a sign to everyone who saw him that he was not a prince first, but an omega, as beautiful and useless as a slave. He felt, for the second time in his life, defeated.

His father came to his tent hours after the Vereians had left and the ink on the treaty Damen had helped craft, was dried. A passing soldier had at least had the decency to inform Damen of that.

“What you did was reckless and bull headed,” His father started, walking resolutely to the tankard of wine on Damen’s vanity. Damen didn’t respond, instead he continued to watch the flames crackle in the cooking fire just outside his tent. “Damen, look at me.”

“Yes, Exalted?” Damen monotoned. He knew his father hated it and it gave him a sick thrill to see the ice creap into his eyes. “Please, tell me more about how it was I who put our people in danger, how it was my plan that killed thousands of our most able bodied men, and was I who planned nothing but which slut I was to fuck the night after my men died for me while my wife awaited me at home with my firstborn son, tell me father, tell me about my faults!”

He was yelling at the end, his face twisting up in a grimace and his whole body tightening as if for a fight. He was tired. So tired. All he wanted was to sleep, to lay down and forget his woes. Instead his father stood there as if by sheer spite he could dictate nature’s whims.

“Do not play games with me father, for I am tired and do not play them as well as you,” Damen sighed. He’s been doing that quite a bit lately. “If you are mad, do not pretend that it is with I. Kastor will not be a good king. I hoped he would be, I hoped and prayed with all my heart that he would be, but he will not, he never will, and I will be locked up in that damnable palace watching him erode away everything that you have built for the rest of my life or at least until Kastor decides which general to sell me to for the highest price.” Damen laughed pathetically and his father flinched. “I heard one offered him his three daughters and half his land, other tried to give his whole damn harem. Kastor said I was to be saved for someone special.”

“Kastor would obey my commands-” He defended, moving forward as if to lay his hand on Damen’s arm.

“He will not listen to anyone, least of all an old man!” Damen cried, his anger making his scent become thick and cloying. “Admit it, he cares nothing for statecraft or the wellbeing of our nation! He cares only for himself and his pleasure. No king since Moros held such a large harem, even Queen Keres for all her evil never acted the way my good brother does! He drains our coffers on wine and women and thinks nothing of the winters and our trade routes. I have walked among the people father, seen their pain and felt their anger. They know what it is to have a good king, and they will tear down anyone who they deem unworthy. Kastor will not rule for more than handful of moons after your death, this I know.”

“You threaten your brother?” His father asked, voice soft. Unusual for the king and unheard of towards Damen.

“I wished to warn him. I wished to protect him. And now I am treated no better than a petulant slave. So yes father, I believe that just might have been a threat.” Damen said. His father moved forward and nodded, placing a hand on his shoulder. The king placed his fingers under Damen’s chin and moved him to face him. Their eyes met.

“Good.” Theomedes whispered.

“You wish a civil war?” Damen gasped, his confusion causing him to lean into his father’s gentle hand. The king just smiled at the unthinking comfort his son took.

“No, son, no good king does, but I can not undo my own ruling. So you must do so.” He pulled a roll of parchment from his bag and placed it in Damen’s hands. “You offered a bloodless way to take Delpha and we laughed. Now I offer you a bloodless way to save our people from destitution and ruin.”

Damen unrolled the scroll with timid hands. The ink was articulate and perfect, as all marriage agreements are. Their names were written in at the bottom in flowing script. Thoemedes blocky hand was in place of Damen’s, for fathers know best for their omega children.

“He is just a boy,” Damen whispered, almost soundless in grief. The last vestiges of his freedom were slipping away with the adolescent flourish that made up Laurent of Vere’s name.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I have asked for your time tonight to dine,” Damen said and noting the flush of color on his cheeks, he continued. “I have asked the princess to join us as chaperone to discuss-” Damen paused to think of a more delicate way of saying treason.
> 
> “Treason?” The prince asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ignore the mistakes. Please leave comments and suggestions about the story! I love hearing you ideas and feedback!

He was blond.

That was, shamefully, the first thing Damen thought about the Veretian prince. They rode into Ios on beautifully bred white mares, their symbol of the starburst fluttering from banners and sashes. Damen watched their approach from his room. Omega’s, even noble ones, had no place in the welcoming of a visiting prince.

Damen instead busied himself with penning a letter to a kyros who was asking for reinforcements to the East. Kastor had fosted the job off himself and onto Damen, too busy with the newest class of slaves too have any interests in matters of state.

He was reaching for his seal and wax when his guards knocked and let a tall and well-built man into his rooms. He had to be from the Vere group, if the sigils etched into his armor didn’t give him away, his nervous twitching would have. Damen had pity on the man.

“Can I help you?” Damen asked, quiet and reserved. If the alpha expected a bow, he didn’t show it, instead reaching into his breast pocket and pulling out a folded note marked as from the desk of the Crown Prince.

It was wrinkled, obviously of great importance if the prince worried about his birds being intercepted or shot down. Damen read it quickly, skimming the useless pleasantries until Auguste got to the point.

Their, admittedly small, number of correspondents gave Damen the clue that the new king cared for nothing more in the world than the safety and care of his younger brother. Safety, it seemed, that was needed between Damen’s betrothed and their Veretian uncle.

“Inform the guards that my fiance and I will dine in my room tonight,” Damen commanded the guard. He looked slightly taken aback but inclined his head and made to move only looking back once.

“Who will be your chaperone, your grace?” He asked, face a bit harder and more determined.

“Ask for the princess,” Damen said, voice flat.

The man left Damen alone with the sounds of welcoming bells echoing throughout his chamber.

~ ~ ~

He is cold.

That was the second thing Damen thought about Laurent of Vere. Even at ten and four summers, the boy was sharp as a hawk, his eyes narrowed in suspicion and his lips, a pretty flush of pink, were tightened into a bloodless line. He would grow to be undoubtedly beautiful.

Laurent of Vere was also very much an alpha. Even with his small frame and soft face, his scent was sharp and pungent, as if to constantly remind all that might doubt him. Even from his place to the left of the dias, Damen could smell the mix of warm animal and bitter fruit. He thought about his own adolescent scent, a sickly sweet mix of oranges and iron. It had changed over time, no doubt how the prince’s would as well, but now, it made all but the boy’s uncle step aside.

Damen looked quietly up to Kastor who sat in their father’s place until this latest bout of sickness passed. Jokaste met his eye and nodded slightly, a small upturn of her painted lips. Damen looked away, catching the prince in a heated stare. The uncle stepped forward and gave a pathetic greeting in Akelion before relying on the translator to his right. 

“We thank you for your generosity in the face of rebuilding after such a devastating war!” He said, tilting his head down in sadness, as if thinking of his departed brother. “With this marriage, we shall forever tie together two of the greatest nations on the continent. Apart we are strong, but combined, we can achieve heights only dreamed of by our ancestors!”

Kastor, apparently tired of listening to the man, simply waved his hand and sent the slaves to retrieve the belongings of the guests. The man was caught off guard and huffed unattractively when Damen’s slave Erasmus took the bag from his shoulder and led him down the hall. Damen stood to leave, his fingers itched for a sword, but his brother stopped his escape.

“Omega!” He called, his voice echoing in the open room. Everyone stilled, the slaves in fear and the Veretians in shock. “Help your alpha with his bags.”

The room was quiet. Damen stood tall-backed, his face tilted downwards in mock submission to hide his clenched jaw from his smirking brother. Damen moved slowly, reaching to take the small duffle from the servant standing just behind the prince. Laurent of Vere watched with wide eyes, the first real show of emotion Damen had seen from him. The severe collar of his outfit couldn’t hide the blush that crawled its way up his thin neck.

Damen moved resolutely forward, ignoring the way his cuff caught the light and instead, squaring his shoulders as if he were marching into battle.

The walk was slow and filled with tension. He might have been nothing more than a glorified slave to his brother but he was also a prince, and took to leading of the group, directing each member of the party to the correct room with a slave to help them unpack and get settled in.

The prince was the last person to be settled, his room closest to the royal quarters. His uncle’s eyes followed the boy as they moved away and the heavy weight of those eyes sent Damen’s skin crawling.

They made no small talk as they moved into the royal wing of the palace, the walls felt to almost be closing in on him as they slowly got closer to his rooms. Damen stopped and nodded neatly to the solid carved door. The prince pushed them open and gasped, his small mouth opening with awe and turning his once harsh face into one sweet with childish wonder. The wind from the ocean swept into the room from the open windows, catching the curls of Damen’s hair and even swaying the loose parts of Laurent of Vere’s outfit. 

“Beautiful, yes?” Damen asked, catching himself. “The guards stand at the entrance of the royal wing and patrol every few hours. There is only one way in and out so if you would prefer anyone to be barred from your quarters, you need only inform the guards.”

The boy nodded, tugging self-consciously at the hem of his sleeve. He seemed softer here, less Veretian snake and more the child Damen was expecting.

“I have asked for your time tonight to dine,” Damen said and noting the flush of color on his cheeks, he continued. “I have asked the princess to join us as chaperone to discuss-” Damen paused to think of a more delicate way of saying treason.

“Treason?” The prince asked, his voice a controlled tenor that had no note of a boy aging into adulthood. 

“Yes, I suppose being blunt might, in this case, be helpful,” Damen sighed. The prince nodded and moved to the window to overlook the water. Damen took the cue and made his way out the door.

Dinner was a stunted and quiet affair. The boy talked only when directly asked a question and took the time when he was not talking to stare at Damen over his goblet of water. His previously timid nature seemed to be nowhere in sight as they ate, Laurent seemingly to take great interest in the way Damen’s hair curled around his forehead and the way he would lick the grease from the meat off his fingers with his tongue.

Jokaste didn’t help matters by simply looking everywhere around the room but at him. She wore a beautiful purple dress that hung off her neck to drape strategically down to her feet, hiding the slight swell of her stomach, the remainder of the birthing weight she had yet to lose.

“I had thought perhaps we might have a more quiet affair,” The prince said, delicately cutting his food and taking small, measured bites. Damen went to answer but Jokaste caught him first.

“If you are referring to the dastardly plan to bloodlessly remove my useless husband from a place of power, it was I who convinced Theimedes to do such a thing in the first place,” She leaned back, throwing her feet into Damen’s lap and sipping at her wine glass. “Do you really think these honorable Akelions could ever come up with something so complex?”

“Tell me, your grace, should I be offended?” Damen asked, rubbing circles into the soft skin of her feet. Laurent hid his blush behind his goblet of water.

“Oh my dear-heart, you are much too sweet without a sword in your hand,” She said, the slight softening at her eyes the only indication of her affection for him. “Unfortunately, my husband will seek me out tonight. The longer I keep him in my bed and out of the King’s rooms, the better off we will all be.”

Laurent said nothing as she gathered her things, choosing to slip out the side door into the hidden slave hallways than the guarded public halls. The boy rubbed his hands on his laced trousers before taking a large drink of water, as if stealing himself for something.

“My uncle-”

“I know.”

Damen sighed. Laurent watched him with wide eyes, the blue becoming watery as the boy so young, held back tears. He moved forward, kneeling before the boy and lifting his chin higher from where it had drooped in shame.

“Never bow your head,” Damen advised. “Never show someone they have gotten to you.”

“My brother said you were soft,” Laurent accused, his dainty fingers curled into fists.

“Your brother deserves it. He is a kind man who wishes me no harm,” Damen felt his face soften. He, inexplicably, saw himself in Laurent. “I learned young that beauty is but a cage if one is not careful. They way your uncle looks at you, it is not familial.”

Laurent was quiet, slowly lifting his head to let their eyes meet. His voice never rose above a whisper.

“No.”

Damen wanted to cry, to scream to the heavens, why everything must be so damn hard? Instead, he folded Laurent’s hands in his own and rubbed the delicate bird bones under the skin. The warmth of omega sent a gentle shiver through the boy. His shoulders had tightened with fear, but loosened as the room became a place of care and comfort.

Damen had felt their eyes when he was young, the hands that came from nowhere to touch his shoulder or thigh. Fingers that dipped too low during a dance, guards who presumed too much of their position. The only difference between the princes was that Damen carried a sword.

In the days that came, it was the only comfort he could give, a flash of scent here, a brush of their fingers there. The boy was almost constantly surrounded on orders from his brother, but every moment the boy had free, Damen made sure it was with him. The boy’s uncle was a fly in the milk, buzzing around behind them.

For as clever as both princes called him, he was just as susceptible to an omega’s scent as his beta guards. He was an alpha, barely, and seemed to almost disregard Damen as something inconsequential. Damen was neither a great actor nor a good liar, he mostly relied on people being too distracted by his exposed flesh to think too much on his words, but Laurent’s uncle instead seemed to find every part of Laurent to be much more interesting than any piece of Damen.

Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and then it came time to let the boy prince return home. Damen had demanded men from his personal guard follow the group to the border, another line of defense and the only thing Damen could do.

As the boy going into manhood stood before him, just as small and just as beautiful as when he first arrived, Damen couldn’t help but press a small kiss to the crown of his head.

He thought of their time spent in the library, the boy out skilling Damen at chess, long hours riding horses along the trails of Ios. The late night escapes to the town to watch the candle’s blink out one by one until the whole of the city slept. He thought of the wit of his tongue and how he knows the boy will grow to be one of the most beautiful people Damen has ever seen.

Laurent moved back, finger grazing his thigh where the dagger Damen had made for him laid snuggly in its sheath. 

It is the last sight of the boy-prince riding his white mare out of the city that sends the thoughts echoing through his head, ones he hopes Laurent knows. He saw it in the eyes, from his guard, Jord, to his healer, Paschal. He is blonde. He can be cold.

And he is loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come hit me up on tumblr @ whimper-soldier

**Author's Note:**

> I had this prompt bouncing around in my head for MONTHS and finally got the drive to fix up the shitty draft that is currently 30 pages on my laptop. Lets hope I get around to fixing the second part soon. Comments would be extremely appreciated!


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